China might strip lower courts of the power to impose...

China might strip lower courts of the power to impose the death penalty as the Beijing News reported that the People's Supreme Court said it was "considering taking back the right to approve death sentences".
Analysts said the move by the supreme court would delay executions, if not reduce the number of death row inmates.
It would also help standardise the use of capital punishment. "All people equal before the law is a principle of our constitution," law expert Liu Renwen, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in an editorial in the paper.
"But having the right to approve the death penalty at a lower level created differences in the standards for the use of the death penalty in different areas."